


Shine Forth

by concernedlily



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Harry Hart Lives, M/M, Reunions, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the 317th day since Harry had died. The counting was becoming increasingly depressing, but at this point he was superstitious about it: he was nursing an absurd but insidious notion that if he stopped now, he would never see England again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shine Forth

It was the 317th day since Harry had died. The counting was becoming increasingly depressing, but at this point he was superstitious about it: he was nursing an absurd but insidious notion that if he stopped now, he would never see England again.

"Aleksandr," Maria said, poking her head round the door. "Your appointment is here to see you."

"Send him in after five minutes, please, and bring tea," he said, in the flawless Russian that had become second nature. He'd bloody dreamt in it the other night, always a sign of a tiny bit of grip being lost.

It was yet another hideous billionaire and he needed a moment to slap the right smile on his face. Breaking into the right circles of this part of Russian society had been very difficult in some ways, because everyone here was both paranoid and did indeed have many people out to get them; and easy in others, because even Kingsman ghost agents had access to the Kingsman fortune, and everyone here loved money and would overlook a great deal to be nice to those who had it.

"Yevgeny," he said, rising in greeting. The man was slight, greying, and wearing the sixth most horrible suit Harry had ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on. "How kind of you to come round."

"Always happy to make the time for you, Sasha," Orlov said, and they smiled at one another in cheerful mutual enmity.

***

The 322nd day, or to be accurate 322nd evening, started well, inasmuch as it were possible for anything to go well in a sticky-floored St Petersburg bar. Harry was there with three of his more reprehensible associates and their assorted hangers-on, and was engaged in the slow murder of a blameless orchid by way of discreetly topping up its water with the top-shelf vodka he was supposed to be enjoying.

The most appalling of Harry's current companions, known privately to Harry as Fucknugget due to his habit since V-Day of stockpiling gold, had stopped wittering on about the latest bottle-blonde popsy he'd met and was talking about the bar owner's brother, an arms dealer who'd just got into the city from Latvia. Harry started listening properly, falling into his old habit of mentally scrawling names, dates, facts into an imaginary ruled notebook, like the ones he'd used as a schoolboy, all the information neatly held and ready to be called up later and reported. Apparently there was to be an opportunity to meet the man -

Ah, right now. They all turned and watched as an almighty clatter at the door introduced a besuited man, brylcreemed hair and gold jewellery like a seventies acid flashback, sauntering ahead while behind him a gaggle of four henchmen dragged in a bedraggled, bowed figure, in a Kingsman pinstripe bloodied and ripped almost beyond recognition. A young figure, stocky, with sandy brown hair.

The sight caused much merriment on Harry's table, as the brother came to join them. The bar's other patrons had fallen briefly quiet, but as the out-of-place little group moved further inside the chatter rose loud and nervous, backs turning to the centre of the room, covering the commotion with people suddenly remembering the babysitter, a TV programme they wanted to watch, merely needing to get home immediately for unspecified reasons; and gathered up bags and coats.

Harry joined in the jeering, distantly, made some remark about the excitement; he picked up his glass of vodka and wandered over to where the goons were making sport of putting the boot in to their captive, under cover of forcing him to the back rooms.

Eggsy looked up at Harry from his knees.

He had one cheekbone bruised and swelling, was cradling one arm, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

His face changed, from mere pain to devastation, his eyes widening in shock. His punched-pink mouth started to shape an H, and Harry loathed that he had to be grateful that one of the goons knocked him to the floor before Eggsy could get more of it out.

Even down, beaten, Eggsy didn’t take his eyes from Harry. He looked confused and upset; he looked at Harry as if he might be a ghost, which fit marvellously well because looking at him there, curled and hurt, Harry felt rather like he was having an out of body experience: rage and tenderness filled him until there was nothing left, no thought, only intention.

He gave Eggsy a final long look, turned smartly on his heel, and returned to his table. The departing crowd split around him, giving the same wide berth to the path the henchmen made pulling Eggsy stumbling to the back rooms. Harry was asked about it when he regained his seat and he laughed, said something dismissive, and knocked his glass of vodka back in one.

On one hand, nine months of his life had been put towards this, an important mission for the future of the country and the world, delivering valuable ongoing intelligence and information back to those who needed to know about it; a sacred duty and charge far above Harry’s own petty feelings and what, were his life his own, he might consider his priorities.

On the other, Harry had recently started having sexual feelings at the thought of a decent cup of tea, and a fellow Kingsman - a fellow Galahad - _Eggsy_ \- required immediate assistance.

The bar was now nearly empty and Harry’s companions were disconsolate about the sudden shortage of pretty women in short frocks to ogle. He got up, put on his coat and excused himself, and they laughed appreciatively as he commandeered the half-full bottle of vodka and carried it with him.

It wasn’t hard to work out where they’d gone. The back rooms of this bar were small, just a cool room used to stock the drink and an office, and the sounds of a beating were coming from the office. Harry moved towards it, keeping the characteristic click of his oxfords silent with the ease of long experience, and poured a splashing line of vodka in a line in front of the office door and from there down the short hall, into the cellar, and up to the spirits shelves in the chilly bare-brick room. He left the empty there and selected a new, full vodka bottle.

Then he heel-clicked his way obnoxiously back through the hall and slammed the office door open.

"Ужасно жаль прерывать," he said, swinging into the room. Fuck, but he missed his Rainmaker: it added just the right touch of insouciance to moments like these. He popped the vodka on the table by the door, for now.

The block-headiest of the henchman turned and glared at him. He was sweating and his knuckles were scraped; Eggsy's nose was bleeding freshly. The henchman said, "Какого черта ты здесь делаешь?"

Eggsy raised his head and looked at Harry, remaining disbelief swallowed up by just enough awareness to be desperate. Harry smiled at the henchman pleasantly and said, "Мне показалось, что сейчас подходящее время, чтобы сказать вам _get down_."

Eggsy did. Harry had his silenced gun drawn and the head goon down with a neat double-tap to centre mass before the lad hit the floor. As Harry ducked to flip the attacker coming up on him from behind over his shoulder, he registered with faint approval that Eggsy was making for cover behind the solid mahogany desk. A head shot this time to the second sprawled goon and blood started to soak the carpet and spread. He felt a bruising bullet impact just under the right shoulder blade, grabbed a paperweight off the desk and threw it overarm behind himself, heard a choked-off grunt as it hit, spun with the motion of the throw and took the man with a bullet to the chest.

There had been a fourth. Now, as he looked round, there was a pair of feebly twitching jeans-clad legs sticking out from behind the desk, where Eggsy had gone.

Harry reholstered his gun, smoothed his coat, and ruffled his hair. Then he went round the side of the desk.

Eggsy was pushing the corpse away from himself, looking slightly dazed from the beating; disheveled; perfect. Some small anxiety that Harry had been holding in his mind, heart and sinews ever since he'd left Eggsy in his bathroom and got on a plane fell away; he felt a peaceful, simple joy like stepping into sunlight after harsh winter. 

"Hello, Eggsy," he said. 

Eggsy looked up and said, "Harry."

Very few people had called him by his real name in the last ten months. Nobody else had ever said it in that particular cadence Eggsy gave it, the wonder and trust.

And even Eggsy had never said his name before the way he did now. Harry was briefly reminded of a nanny he'd once had, a wildly religious woman who'd dismissed everything since Margery Kempe as newfangled nonsense; if the Good Lord had returned to Earth in front of her, she might have looked at him and said his name much as Eggsy now looked at Harry and said his.

"Yes," Harry said. "How nice to see you. We need to leave."

Eggsy glanced around and seemed to register the sight and smell of death around them with some surprise. He touched his bleeding nose gingerly. "Yeah, all right."

He heaved himself up, using the desk as a crutch. Harry reached for him and their fingers brushed; Eggsy looked at him and Harry could almost see the words racing through his mind, so many he visibly gave up on trying to articulate any of them. Instead he said, "Harry," again, so breath-light Harry wasn't entirely sure he'd even heard it.

Harry put his hand on the sleeve of Eggsy's ruined jacket and tugged. "May I?" he said. 

Eggsy clocked the vodka and nodded, shrugged out of the jacket; Harry came round to help him, listening to his tiny clenched-jaw sounds of pain. He touched the nape of Eggsy's neck tentatively and Eggsy tipped his head forward for Harry's fingertips. His bare skin looked pale and vulnerable, smudged with blood.

Harry ripped a good chunk of the sleeve off and poured vodka over it, his fingers chilling where the alcohol spilled onto them. Then he stuffed the rag into the top of the bottle and got his lighter out - one of the explosive models, which he'd been jealously guarding as the only one he had here; no need to waste it when a Molotov cocktail was so easy to make.

Harry opened the window and handed Eggsy out of it, trying to make it as easy on his battered body as he could, then went to pull the door open, and back to the window to climb out after him. He pushed Eggsy to a crouch against the opposite wall, out of range of the windows, lit the rag and tossed it in, ducking the initial crash and explosion and then checking to see that the accelerant trail to the cellar had lit. 

It had and he collected Eggsy from the wall, suffused with the warmth of a job well done and also of a bloody great fire raging behind him. The warmth of Eggsy next to him was something else again, to be appreciated and carefully imprinted on the brain for remembering later. He put his arm around Eggsy's waist, felt Eggsy's arm creeping round him in return, and started them down the alley.

"There was a sodding plan, you know," Eggsy said, as they rounded the corner; there was a dim boom as the other side of the building went up. "I had it under fucking control."

"You clearly fucking didn't," Harry said, as they made their slow way past the front of the club. "You look like seven kinds of shite."

One of Harry's drinking companions was approaching the bar's door from the inside, too much the big man to run from a little thing like an explosion. He saw Harry and Eggsy and his mouth opened in fury and outrage; he started to turn to summon one of his minions.

Fuck it. Harry always liked to save a lighter for later, but if this wasn't later, when was?

He primed the grenade, gave his former target a beaming smile, and threw it just inside the door of the club, pressing Eggsy's head and vulnerable torso into his chest and guiding him away from the satisfyingly destructive explosion that followed.

With some regret, he dismissed almost as soon as it occurred the idea of taking one of the plush luxury cars his companions would no longer be needing: they’d be comfortable for Eggsy but too identifiable, and in any case got all of about three miles to the gallon. Instead he supported Eggsy down the road until he found a serviceable hatchback, Eggsy drooping against Harry somewhat but making no complaint other than loud, rapid breaths.

Harry propped Eggsy up on the lucky car, jimmied the lock no problem, and leaned in to check the fuel gauge, which was nearly full (unsurprising: people tended to fill up when they could these days, petrol being difficult to come by week-to-week). Thus reassured, he reached round to unlock the back door.

"Sorry about your jacket," Harry said. "You look good in the suit. I thought you would." He took his coat off and put it round Eggsy, opened the back door of the car and urged Eggsy to sit down on the seat with gentle hands.

"Harry," Eggsy said hesitantly, as if he were only now really seeing him; he patted at Harry's chest and arms like he expected him not to be entirely solid. "Harry, you're _real_."

"I certainly am," Harry said. "Rest, Eggsy. We'll talk when we're away from the scene of the crime."

He took the front seat and hotwired the car efficiently. Harry found a bottle of water in the passenger footwell and passed it back to Eggsy, along with his pocket handkerchief. Eggsy took a couple of deep swallows and then did a rudimentary clean-up, the fine features of his face emerging out of the mopped-up blood, the bruising disappearing in the poor light.

Then Eggsy lay back obediently, pulling the coat around him and tucking his hands up under it. He watched Harry for the first twenty miles, his eyes gleaming when they passed under the streetlamps, and then he took a deep breath and shut them.

***

Harry drove for a good two hours before judging it safe to pull over for a bit and check on Eggsy properly. He found a lay-by that seemed to be usefully made up of pooled shadows and shut the engine off, watching in the rear view mirror.

The stop seemed to rouse Eggsy from whatever thoughts or drowse he'd fallen into. "Harry?" he said.

"How are you getting on?" Harry said. He could hardly make the lad out in the darkness and abruptly he climbed out of the car, shutting the door with a quiet click, and opened the back.

He crawled in next to Eggsy. It was a tight fit with the two of them, but the way Eggsy clutched at him as soon as he was close enough and the sensation of easing in his chest when he could feel Eggsy vital and warm against him told him this was entirely needed.

"Harry," Eggsy repeated, a rough note of pain and doubt threading through his voice, and Harry put his arms around Eggsy as best he could in the small space. Eggsy touched his face with shaking fingers, there in the dark, pressed his forehead against Harry's, and they just breathed together for moments, minutes, a long time.

"I thought I'd gone mental," Eggsy said eventually, hoarsely. "Head buzzing, ribs banging, and then there’s you. Thought for a minute maybe I was _dead_ , and you was gonna escort me personally to the pearly gates."

"I can assure you we're both of us very much alive," Harry said. Eggsy nodded, his forehead wiping grimy sweat onto the shoulder of Harry's suit, his body tensing and relaxing; Harry loosened his hold and Eggsy made a sound of discontent and pushed closer, nestling himself into Harry. Harry closed his arms around Eggsy again wordlessly.

“What happened?” Eggsy said. “I was watching the feed, when you were shot - I _saw_ it, Harry, I saw you die -”

“Oh,” Harry said softly, his fingers twitching against the firm muscle of Eggsy's back. Merlin had kept that to himself, when Harry had asked after Eggsy, before he’d agreed the ghost mission. He'd told himself that although they’d parted on unhappy terms, at least Eggsy hadn’t known what Harry had done, how it had… ended. “I’m sorry, Eggsy. I didn’t know that. I was severely injured, enough to be taken to hospital with the dead, and when I awoke - well, you can imagine, two or three days after V-Day. It was some time before I was recovered enough to make contact, and by the time I did our new Arthur had a new assignment for me, using the chaos to infiltrate attempts to corrupt the Russian recovery. Top secret, I’m afraid, while she got Kingsman back into line.”

“‘Til I came along,” Eggsy said. “Sorry.”

He didn't sound very sorry. Still, Harry said, “That is _not_ your fault,” with asperity. “You shouldn’t have been sent anywhere near me, and I will be having words with Merlin about it.”

“Thought I was going mad,” Eggsy said again. “I used to have - I had dreams where you were alive, I thought about seeing you again all the time -”

“Well, here I am,” Harry said briskly, stroking Eggsy’s back as he pressed his face damply into Harry’s neck. “I did think about you often. I haven’t been able to hear much from Kingsman, but I was happy to know you’d taken on Galahad, to hear how well you’ve been doing.”

“Were you?” Eggsy said hopefully.

“Of course.”

“I’m still pissed off with you,” Eggsy said, snuggling yet closer. “And Merlin. Lying pair of bastards.”

“I’m not going to say that’s unfair,” Harry said, in his most annoyingly reasonable tone of voice. “But I will point out I haven’t exactly been on a bloody holiday in the Caribbean.”

"Suppose not," Eggsy said. "You've been - I mean, have you -"

Harry waited, but that appeared to be it. He prompted, "Have I...?"

"I really missed you," Eggsy strove on, in a determined way that nevertheless seemed to threaten further sogginess.

"Did you? I missed you too."

"No, you don't understand," Eggsy insisted. "I mean I _really missed you_ , like -"

Harry kissed him. A surprised noise, Eggsy's mouth falling conveniently open, and then Eggsy's arms were around Harry's waist and he was participating enthusiastically in a long, deep kiss. He was quite everything Harry had thought about, in the time apart: yielding, eager, sweet.

"Like that, darling?" he said, when they'd finished. 

Eggsy was gratifyingly big-eyed and breathing hard. "Yeah," he said. "That was it."

"Good," Harry said. 

"This don't mean I've forgiven you," Eggsy said. He bossed Harry onto his back on the narrow seat and draped himself over Harry, settling his head comfortably on Harry's chest and giving a pleased sigh. His body on Harry's felt heavy, wonderful. 

"I hope you'll allow me to work on it," Harry said complacently. He pulled at his coat, settling it cosily over Eggsy once again. "I should be in London for a good while, after all this."

Eggsy went a bit stiff. "Er, about that - I moved into your house, see -"

Oh, God. Harry's lovely little house had been taken over by games consoles and ugly trainers. "Just tell me Mr Pickle is all right."

"Yeah, he'll be fine when we get him out the loft."

"Hmm," Harry said. He tilted Eggsy's chin up and took his mouth again, comprehensively. "He's going to be happy to be back where he belongs."

***

The 325th day: England's green and pleasant land, and thence home to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> The conversation in Russian is:  
> "Terribly sorry to interrupt."  
> "What the fuck are you doing here?"  
> "I thought this would be a good time to tell you to"  
> (With thanks to Kairu and to Google Translate!)
> 
>  
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://concernedlily.tumblr.com)!


End file.
